Claire Adrian - Incest, A Way Of Life

Many psychotherapists, including myself, believe that the effects of actual incest involving a child are not so disastrous as are the effects of a parent's seductive attitudes toward that child that never culminates in any manifest sexual activity. One theory is that the problem of unconscious incestuous desire may well underlie all cases of neuroses and psychoses, and that actual incest will not have such a deleterious effect upon the child since parental approval of the behavior is implicit. There will therefore be little residual guilt on the part of the child, except later, perhaps, when he grows older and listens to the opinions of others on the matter of incest.

In spite of our cultural taboos, it cannot be denied that the home is the proper place to instruct the young in regard to sex. Ideally, a child should be given this vital knowledge by those he loves and trusts implicitly, and, ideally, this instruction should be accompanied by actual physical demonstrations, in which the parent will instruct the child, by having sex relations with him.

In this respect, many modern-day societies are superior to our own. I refer here to the Nkuno and Somaba tribes of Central Africa, where parents teach their children the various techniques of sexual intercourse, the mothers instructing the sons, the fathers instructing the daughters. Ila and Cheva children, the children of some southeast Sudan tribes, as well as the boys and girls of several Congolese tribes, are also given physical sex instruction by their parents.

We, who are civilized, call these people "savages," and their practices perverted. But in reality, who are the savages-we, who fall easy victim to nervous and emotional disorders, such as hypertension, heart disease, etc., and are prone to alcoholism, suicide and divorce, or they, who are astonishingly free of these afflictions? It is we who are the victims…

The day must come when we must free ourselves from the folly of accepting practices and taboos that are based solely on tradition and follow a road mapped solely on the principles of psycho-sexual pragmatism.

Whether or not Dr. Schilling is correct in his theory is a moot question. Nevertheless, we can state that until that new "road" becomes a reality, many adults will fall victim to that ever-constant, ever-spreading, ever-insidious syndrome that is part and parcel of modern America: the teenage incestuous syndrome.

It exists. We must face it…